Poisoned Ground: A Hakim and Arnold Mystery (Hakim & Arnold Mystery 3) Read online

  ‘The Muslim women here in Manor Park say you have a degree in psychology. I chose you for that, and because of your faith.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mumtaz was, as far as she knew, the only female Muslim private detective in Newham, if not the whole of London. And in a borough where a lot of Muslim women lived, that gave her both a certain reputation and some responsibilities. The reputation meant that she never turned a woman away, whatever her religion, while her main responsibility was to be honest with her clients. Many of the women’s partners and husbands were not worth the anxiety, work and love that these women lavished on them.

  ‘The hospital, they know about el Masri,’ Salwa said. ‘But they say nothing and they don’t want to do anything. The police know only that el Masri and my husband came from different political directions.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t tell them that el Masri abused his patients?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? If he had cited the sexual abuse the police would have had to contact the hospital management.’

  Salwa shrugged. ‘I can’t say. He still won’t. I’ve tried to persuade him.’

  Mumtaz didn’t like this. Why would anyone withhold information from the police, whatever its nature, if that information might get one released?

  ‘Hatem is innocent,’ Salwa said. ‘When he went back to work after Mr Cotton gave him time off, el Masri tried to make him abuse women too. He said, “Be quiet now, Hatem, and you can have pretty girls also.” He thinks Hatem is one of those bad Muslims. But he isn’t. Hatem refused and one week later the police arrive and find a bomb in his locker. Hatem wouldn’t know how to make a bomb. The police ask him how he made it and he couldn’t tell them. He was framed by el Masri. That is for certain.’

  But then why, Mumtaz wondered, had el Masri gone to all the trouble of building a bomb to frame Hatem if the hospital either chose to believe or were convinced by the consultant’s story anyway? Putting an explosive device in Hatem’s locker seemed like using a hammer to crack a nut. She felt there had to be something else that connected the men. ‘Did Hatem know el Masri back in Egypt?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘El Masri comes from Heliopolis, it is like the Kensington of Cairo. Hatem was born in Boulaq. That is like those places you hear about in south London where young people get shot – worse than that even. How could they meet? No, Hatem and el Masri met first at Ilford Hospital.’

  ‘How did Hatem know that Dr el Masri was a supporter of President Mubarak?’

  ‘Because they are two Egyptians at the same place of work,’ Salwa said. ‘They had a conversation about our country. And my husband has a beard, el Masri didn’t like that. I am sure that you have seen pictures of Hatem on the television.’

  She had. Hatem el Shamy’s bearded face, his skull cap – the classic radical Muslim look for a lot of people – was well known.

  ‘The only way to prove that Hatem is innocent is to prove el Masri’s guilt,’ Salwa said. ‘To me this means that someone has to find him committing lewd acts on his patients. That person must also be prepared to tell the police.’

  ‘Hatem’s colleagues …’

  ‘No good,’ she said. ‘They are frightened for their jobs. They will be called liars and make-believers, just as Hatem was. Hospital has a service called advocacy, made up of volunteers, that is supposed to report patient complaints, but that too is threatened if it makes trouble.’

  ‘So what is the point of it?’ Mumtaz asked.

  Salwa shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Hatem didn’t know. But advocacy could be a way in. It can be useful to us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘A person needs to get into the hospital to watch el Masri and find the truth,’ Salwa said. ‘It must be someone who knows how to watch and also someone who knows about mental illness, too. Hatem always told me that advocacy group all the time need people. Few want to work with the mad. A person of education, like you, would be valuable to them.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Mumtaz paused. ‘You want to employ me to be your eyes and ears …’

  ‘Exactly. To collect evidence to give to the police.’

  ‘Does your husband know you want to do this?’ Mumtaz asked.

  ‘No. It’s not good he know.’

  ‘Because people will think he’s put pressure on you to get him out?’

  ‘Exactly. I never went to Ilford Hospital or met any of the people he worked with. So it is only Hatem’s word that I have. But he is an honest man and a good Muslim, Mrs Hakim, and I believe him.’

  Mumtaz took a deep breath. ‘You know, Mrs el Shamy, even if we can prove that Dr el Masri is abusing his patients, that doesn’t also necessarily prove your husband’s innocence. All that will demonstrate is that the doctor is an unreliable witness.’

  ‘Which means that they will search his house, where they will find explosives.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘What else do I have?’ Salwa said. ‘Eh? What? Sit here with my four children and wait to be deported? Leave my husband to lie in jail for the rest of his life? Mrs Hakim, I will pay you to go into that hospital, join that advocacy group and find out what el Masri is doing. I can think of nothing else. Please, help me.’

  *

  Lee Arnold shook his head. ‘I think it’s well dodgy,’ he said.

  Mumtaz, two steps above him on the iron staircase outside the back entrance to the office, said, ‘Lee, every bone in my body rebelled against the idea of listening to that man’s wife. But what if Hatem el Shamy was right about Dr el Masri? Hatem’s guilt or innocence aside, patients in that hospital could be being abused right now.’

  ‘I take your point but …’ Lee puffed on his cigarette. It tasted odd after all the chilli and garlic in that fish curry. He smoked it anyway. ‘I can’t think why el Shamy didn’t tell the police about the psychiatrist. However religious he is, it’s not his “shame”, is it? It’s el Masri’s.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t because the police wouldn’t have believed him.’

  ‘Or maybe he made it up.’

  ‘Just for his wife’s ears? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m just putting it out there.’

  ‘I can’t stand by and let mentally ill women be abused,’ Mumtaz said.

  He looked up at her. ‘Mrs el Shamy certainly knew which of your buttons to press, didn’t she?’

  ‘She knew I had a degree in psychology.’

  He said nothing. Since Mumtaz had come to work for the Arnold Agency, he was all too well aware of how her reputation had preceded her, especially amongst the local female Asian community.

  ‘Mrs el Shamy will pay me to work for the Ilford Hospital Advocacy,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Depending on how many hours they give me – should I be recruited – and how much work I have to do on the case, that’s good money.’

  She’d appealed to him on behalf of several possible clients before through the prism of money and it had always worked. Although not as skint as she was, he wasn’t far off, especially now he had a girlfriend.

  He said, ‘If you want to go undercover, it’ll be difficult.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because as if working for Salwa el Shamy wasn’t contentious enough, if you find any substance in her story you have to be squeaky clean yourself, and going in as a private detective is not squeaky clean. Just like the police, we can be accused of entrapment. But then going in as Mumtaz Hakim, PI won’t work either, because the advocacy service won’t take you. And if Salwa el Shamy is right, and el Masri likes attractive young women then …’

  ‘But, Lee, I’m not a patient, I’m not vulnerable.’

  He stared into her eyes and for a moment Mumtaz became silent. Such a job was fraught with hazard, both physical and ethical, and she knew it.

  She said, ‘Let me contact the hospital advocacy service. Let me go for an interview. It’s mental health, they always need people.’

  Lee looked down at his cigarette. ‘No.’

  The outright negative took her by surprise.

  ‘Hatem el Shamy is a suspected terrorist – we can’t touch it. The police …’

  ‘The police don’t know his story about el Masri. They just think Hatem and the doctor are political opponents,’ Mumtaz said. ‘The hospital authorities didn’t take him seriously—’

  ‘Maybe because it’s not true.’

  ‘But what if it is?’ she said. ‘What if, irrespective of el Shamy’s status as a suspected terrorist, this doctor is abusing his patients? And there’s something else too, Lee.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If el Masri had the support of his employers, then why go to the trouble of planting a bomb?’

  ‘If he did that.’

  ‘If he did that, yes,’ she said.

  ‘This is really a job for the coppers …’

  ‘But they’re not going to do it, are they? They don’t know,’ she said. ‘Hatem won’t tell them and so Salwa is using us to get to the truth by a different route.’

  ‘Does Hatem el Shamy know what his wife is doing?’

  ‘She says not. What are you thinking?’ When he didn’t answer, she sat down next to him on the metal steps. ‘Lee, I don’t know what’s really going on in that hospital. But if Dr el Masri did go to the trouble of building a bomb to frame Hatem el Shamy—’

  ‘A known Islamist back in Egypt.’

  ‘Yes. But if he went to all that trouble then I can’t accept that he was “just” covering up his own sexual behaviour. That, to me, speaks of something more, something that would have killed people. If el Masri framed Hatem, he was prepared to kill to do it. And if that is so, that makes him a very dangerous person.’

  Lee Arnold put out his cigarette and then lit up another. Mumtaz didn’t like it when he chain-smoked but she knew that he usually did it when he was in some sort of turmoil.

  She said, ‘I had a CRB check done when I worked for that mental health charity just before I got married …’

  ‘They’re not called the Criminal Records Bureau any more.’

  ‘Whatever they’re called, then. It’s still valid. Although it is in my maiden name, Huq.’

  ‘Mumtaz, be quiet,’ Lee said. ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Ssshh.’

  They sat in silence for a good five minutes. She knew that both of their cars needed servicing within the next two months and that business had been slow. She also knew how his mind worked.

  Eventually she said, ‘A girl died, Lee. I looked it up online. Last year. She was called Sara Ibrahim and she threw herself out of a second-floor window. She was under el Masri’s care and she was very, very beautiful.’

  They stared into each other’s eyes until, eventually, Lee blinked.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you sometimes remind me of my Auntie Jean.’

  Mumtaz cocked her head to one side. ‘Why?’

  ‘She was what they used to call a “Women’s Libber” back in the 1970s.’

  ‘A feminist.’

  ‘She worked in one of the first battered women’s refuges in the country,’ he said. ‘She’d do anything for women in trouble.’

  ‘That’s not a fault, Lee,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t say that it was.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ she asked.

  He stood up and then helped Mumtaz to her feet. For a moment their bodies almost touched. She moved away slightly and looked down.

  ‘You volunteer for the Ilford Hospital Advocacy as Mumtaz Huq,’ he said. ‘And let’s see what happens.’

  ‘So we can take Salwa el Shamy’s money?’

  ‘Reluctantly.’ He shrugged. ‘You have to know that I can’t believe her story. Her old man could’ve killed loads of people with his bomb and I find that difficult. Know what I mean?’

  ‘I do, but surely we have to keep an open mind?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lee ground his cigarette end out with his boot. ‘But just don’t go into this thinking you’re gonna suddenly find out Hatem el Shamy is innocent.’

  ‘I’m not. I told his wife that even if Dr el Masri is guilty of sexually abusing his patients, that doesn’t prove that her husband didn’t make that bomb.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘So now I contact Ilford Hospital Advocacy,’ Mumtaz said.

  ‘No.’ He put his cigarettes and lighter in his jacket pocket and walked up to the office door.

  She frowned.

  ‘Go through that volunteer centre up Forest Gate,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a bit longer but it’ll make you look more kosher. If you go straight to the hospital and this doctor is abusing his patients while being protected by his colleagues, you rocking up out of the blue might make them all a bit windy. Know what I mean?

  Mumtaz, following, said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘The devil’s always in the detail.’ He shook his head. He wasn’t happy.

  She changed the subject. ‘How did your lunch work out?’ she asked. ‘Was it nice?’

  ‘Yeah, it was good,’ Lee said.

  ‘I’m glad. I’m just so sorry I couldn’t have been here to keep the office open,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Did you have enough time to enjoy your meal?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Plenty.’

  *

  The girl walked into the house with the ‘Sold’ sign outside without so much as a glance at him. But Naz just smiled. The arrogant little tart would get hers one day, what did he care? And now that her late father’s house was sold, her rather tasty stepmother would be giving him a nice wedge of cash in the not-too-distant future. He looked down the street, trying to ignore the old white man staring at him from across the road. The silly old shit sometimes ‘kept an eye out’ for the Hakim women. How did he honestly think he could protect himself, much less anyone else?

  Then there she was, the stepmother, Mumtaz Hakim, in that terrible old Nissan Micra she drove, pulling up on the concrete slab that her late husband, Ahmet, had once used for his Merc. Unlike her kid, she’d seen Naz. When she got out of the car she walked over to him and pulled him away from her property. Her forcefulness excited him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Just checking on my investment,’ he said. ‘Making sure you haven’t changed your mind.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ She pulled the front of her headscarf a little further down her forehead. Naz knew that in his presence she always felt the need to try to hide. With good cause. ‘I’ve exchanged contracts with Mr and Mrs Singh,’ she said. ‘We’re just waiting for a mutually convenient day for completion. You’ll get your money.’

  ‘And you’ll get a lovely new home in …?’

  ‘Never mind where I’m going,’ she said. ‘Our business together will be at an end.’

  ‘Oh, will it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  The old white man across the street stopped gardening and called over, ‘Everything all right, Mrs Hakim?’

  ‘Mind your own fucking business. Cunt!’

  She was amazingly strong when she wanted to be. When she pushed him, Naz nearly lost his footing.

  ‘Oh, Ron, I’m so sorry for that!’ she said to the old white man. ‘My nephew. Mannerless! What can you do with these young people?’

  ‘Oh, well …’ The old git clearly didn’t know what to say. He probably fancied her and so he’d almost certainly let it go.

  But then she pushed him forward. ‘Apologize immediately, Naz,’ she said. He didn’t and just looked down at his feet. ‘Now!’

  He mumbled something, simply to stop the whole thing. It wasn’t ‘sorry’ but it seemed to satisfy the old bastard because he went inside his house.

  When he’d gone, she said, ‘Don’t abuse my neighbours. Don’t abuse anyone around me.’

  He leant against her next-door neighbour’s wall. ‘Or what?’ he said.

  ‘Or one day someone will really lose it with you,’ she said. ‘Like the people who’ve just bought my house.’

  ‘Sikhs.’

  ‘Mrs Kaur is a lawyer and her husband is a very good amateur boxer,’ she said. ‘Don’t mess with them.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Just don’t even think about it,’ she warned him. Then she started to walk towards her house.

  The Woodgrange Estate in Forest Gate was a lovely place to live. The houses were substantial Victorian villas set in large gardens on tree-lined streets that were almost always quiet. If one could afford such a place, it was a good area to bring up kids. But it wasn’t cheap, even though the Sikhs Mumtaz Hakim had sold to had got a bargain. But then she’d been in a hurry to sell.

  Just before she opened the front door and let herself in, Naz heard Mumtaz Hakim say, ‘Soon we’ll all be free of my husband’s debts and, consequently, you, thank God.’

  She closed the door behind her.

  Naz, smiling, knew that her relief was way premature.

  2

  Salwa didn’t tell any of her children about her meeting with Mumtaz Hakim except her eldest girl, Rashida. She was fifteen and so she could understand. But Rashida didn’t like it.

  ‘My father won’t get off,’ she said. ‘The world will end first.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘It’s true. And if Baba knew you were doing this he’d go mad,’ the girl said. Sitting at the kitchen table, doing her homework while her mother washed up, Rashida went back to her books.

  ‘You’re not to tell him!’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘But if this detective can catch el Masri hurting his patients …’

  ‘Baba told you that the doctor had sex with them,’ Rashida said. ‘I heard him.’

  ‘I didn’t want to say …’

  ‘We live in London, Omy, everybody talks about sex.’

  Salwa put the dishes away and sat down opposite her daughter. ‘We have to do everything that we can to help your father,’ she said. ‘Ever since we came here, he has been under suspicion.’